The Social Media 101 Series is sponsored by Global Strategic Management Institute. GSMI’s Social Media Strategies Series are the leading educational events for organizations looking to advance their online capabilities. Learn more.

One of the greatest challenges of social media marketing is juggling multiple accounts across a variety of networks. As messaging, engagement and analytics differ from platform to platform, keeping yourself organized is vital.

A great way to keep your social media presences in line is with CoTweet, a web-based social media management and analytics tool. It has a simple design and the basic plan, which has fairly robust features, is free. Like HootSuite, it’s accessed through your web browser rather than a desktop client.

Mashable spoke with Kevin Bobowski, CoTweet’s marketing director, for an explanation of how to use the platform for social media marketing.

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Setup Support

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While some platforms might leave you to your own devices after a product demo, CoTweet’s Services team is on hand to help you set up your account. This can be helpful if it’s your organizations first go at social media management. The social consultant will customize the setup and training based on your needs, and he or she will also record the training session, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing each step.

Already a social media management pro? You’re welcome to pass on the setup help and get your business started on the platform however works best for you.

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Tweets as Teamwork

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CoTweet is an excellent tool for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer service approach to engagement. It has a number of features in place that ensure each employee is doing his or her work — and taking responsibility for it.

Like many social media management services, CoTweet allows updates and follow-up messages to be assigned to specific social media managers. This can make responses more relevant as team members with certain knowledge bases can handle appropriate questions and comments from followers. The responder’s initials are included at the end of the tweet, letting the follower know there’s a person behind the handle. This not only puts the follower at ease, but also the marketing manager as he or she will know who to talk to if questions (or congratulations!) arise for a specific tweet.

What’s different about CoTweet is its OnDuty status, which notes who is responsible for social streams at a certain time. Aside from organizing your social updates schedule, it allows for more passive monitoring. The person on duty can receive e-mails when something needs to be acted on, freeing him or her up to go to meetings or take calls while remaining aware of social media activity.

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Campaign Conversion

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The ability to track campaigns is the most important feature many marketers look for when deciding on a social media management tool. With CoTweet, you can not only manage clicks on content you publish within the application, but also integrate any web analytics platforms with campaign codes and shortened URLs.

“This provides closed-loop reporting and allows marketers to associate revenue and other success metrics to social media activity,” Bobowski says.

The platform recently launched a new Data Integration framework that allows you to extend the CoTweet application across other CRM tools, including Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Integration. This means you can associate a conversation from Facebook or Twitter with an individual’s existing CRM profile and then tag it as a lead or opportunity. The feature breaks down silos by integrating data across platforms, allowing you to create more comprehensive customer profiles and have more relevant conversations in social media.

“We’re delivering the industry’s first solution to give businesses a complete view of their customers across online, offline and social channels,” says Jesse Engle, general manager of the ExactTarget Social Media Lab, in a press release. “This will help enterprises significantly extend the benefits of social to sales enablement to better target campaigns, increase product demand, improve client satisfaction and quantify the true ROI of social media.”

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Worth a Try?

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Whether you’re looking for a high-level social data reporting solution or just combating “Twitter overwhelm,” CoTweet is worth a shot. The platform supports Twitter and Facebook and has an iPhone app. The Standard edition is free and allows up to six Twitter accounts. The Enterprise version costs $1,500 a month, but you can request a free demo.

Have you used CoTweet for marketing? Would you recommend it? Tell us your experience with the tool in the comments below.

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Series Supported by Global Strategic Management Institute

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The Social Media 101 Series is sponsored by Global Strategic Management Institute, a leading source of knowledge for today’s leaders. Learn more by visiting GSMI’s website, liking it on Facebook and following it on Twitter.

Intronis, an online backup leader in the IT service industry for cloud backup and recovery has been awarded Best Revenue Generator for the third time at the ASCII Reseller Success Summit in Chicago, IL.

The ASCII Group, Inc, the World’s largest IT Solution Provider community provided a great Summit in Chicago and Intronis is proud to have taken part. The Best Revenue Generator Award is presented to the IT company that is recognized for its excellence in this category. Intronis is honored to have been awarded this recognition for the third time in a row, and fully thanks the Solution Provider attendees at the Success Summit who voted.

A current partner, Brian Kerhin of Byte Harmony, Inc. who attended the Summit exclaimed, “Our sales team loves how Intronis delivers value through simple product pricing. Our technicians love the support team at Intronis and how powerful and easy the Intronis software is. Thanks Intronis for helping us help our clients!”

We, at Intronis are happy to help our partners to succeed in their business and to make their lives not only easier, but better with the efficiency of our solution, service and support. The award from ASCII exemplifies how proud we are to help partners like Byte Harmony, Inc.

About Intronis
Intronis is a cloud provider of backup and disaster recovery services for the IT channel. Intronis utilizes 256-bit AES security and multiple data centers located on opposite coasts to ensure data protection and availability. Intronis offers IT service providers a secure data solution combined with a robust partner program, the efficiencies of full web-based account management, and an industry leading technical support team. http://www.intronis.com.

About the ASCII Group
The ASCII Group, Inc., headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, was established in 1984, with additional offices in Canada, India, and the UK. ASCII is the largest paying community of independent computer resellers in the world with more than 2,000 members and system wide end-user sales of approximately $10.5 billion. ASCII provides technology tools, products and services to assist independent information technology resellers increase profits, reduce costs, and grow their respective businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.ascii.com or http://www.asciievents.com for more information on the ASCII 2010 Reseller Success Summits.

Saying it was in no hurry to join several competitors who got acquired, high-performance database vendor ParAccel Inc. has raised a Series E round led by Amazon.com Inc. with current investors all joining. Several of ParAccel’s rivals recently got bought — including Greenplum Inc., Netezza Corp., Vertica Systems Inc. and Aster Data Systems Inc. – but ParAccel’s CEO says the company will remain independent and he hopes to take it public around 2013.

Clarus Therapeutics Inc. officially canceled plans to go public early this month, but its bid to develop the first oral testosterone-replacement product remains alive thanks to an efficient strategy. Clarus has kept its capital needs low by targeting a market, testosterone replacement, in which the requirements for securing U.S. approval are very clear. That gives it an edge over many other biotechs during a tough time — only six U.S. venture-backed biotechnology companies have gone public this year, according to VentureSource.

Also in today’s VentureWire: Motif Investing Inc. is emerging with $6 million in funding from Foundation Capital and Norwest Venture Partners for its alternative to current retail investment opportunities…Ken Elefant, a founding general partner at Opus Capital, has left the firm to join Intel Capital as an investment director…and online real-estate company Zillow Inc. released estimated terms for its planned IPO, setting up a relatively modest debut that would total roughly $45 million.

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving start-ups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, click here.)

Elsewhere around the Web:

EBay is putting its money where it’s mouth is. The company, whose CEO told Dow Jones in May that eBay would look for acquisitions in the mobile-payment space, said today it is buying venture-backed start-up Zong for $240 million in cash. Zong, one of many start-ups trying to address carrier billing as a viable payment for digital goods, raised about $30 million from investors including Matrix Partners, Advent Venture Partners and Newbury Ventures. It’s yet another big acquisition of a company in last year’s FASTech 50, a list of 50 “most promising” start-ups that VentureWire selected for the FASTech conference. Other acquisitions include Milo.com, bought by eBay for $75 million; Heroku, acquired by Salesforce for $212 million; and OpenFeint Inc. acquired by Gree Inc. for $104 million. Others, like Flipboard and Square, have raised significant funding. For this year’s FASTech conference, VentureWire is selecting 50 of the most innnovative start-ups, and is seeking your help–nominations end July 15.

Is Twitter really worth $7 billion, as WSJ reported venture investors may be valuing it at? Venrock’s Marissa Campise sizes up Twitter by taking a look at its potential market value. Michael Kim of Cendana Capital, meanwhile, tells Bloomberg TV that Twitter’s valuation inducates a bubble.

Your start-up isn’t unique and that doesn’t matter, writes RRE Ventures’ Adam Ludwin. It’s all about market intuition, timing and execution–not an entirely unique product, he says.

Then there’s the start-up CEO — George Roberts of OpenView Partners outlines the top three traits of the most successful chiefs.

Adam Davison (News – Alert) will be joining Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions featuring Unified Performance Management, as vice president, the company has announced.

Including management and business development roles with networking companies, Davison brings more than seventeen years of sales experience to Exinda. Maximizing sales in EMEA for international start-ups, Davison has been successful in building markets. Before joining Exinda, he was with Meraki, The Cloud Networking Company, where he successfully spearheaded their entry into the EMEA market.

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products, and the company has shipped over 10,000 appliances to more than 2,000 organizations worldwide.

“Exinda has significantly expanded its international capabilities to better serve our customers in key global markets,” said Michael Sharma, chief executive officer. “We are confident that Adam’s extensive experience and proven understanding of the WAN Optimization landscape will help Exinda to achieve continued growth in EMEA. We are pleased to have Adam as part of the team that is bringing our Unified Performance Management approach to more organizations around the world.”

Davison spent more than ten years with Expand Networks (News – Alert), most recently as Corporate VP Sales and Marketing, prior to Meraki. Previously, Davison held sales management positions at leading networking firms including Ericsson (News – Alert) Enterprise and ACC, the company stated in a press release. Building market presence via its network of distributors and resellers throughout, Davison will be responsible for driving Exinda’s sales activities. Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products.

Recently, the company launched its new Network Reporting Center (NRC) to its WAN optimization solutions offering. The Network Reporting Center, according to Exinda officials, is an advanced reporting solution that delivers comprehensive network diagramming and long-term historical trending and analytics, enabling network managers to get a complete view of their entire worldwide network as reporting at the port layer is not sufficient for most network managers.

For the third year in a row, Monetate, the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization services for websites, will be hosting a retailer roundtable at the Shop.org Merchandising Workshop, being held this year in San Diego from July 11 to 13 (event details can be found at www.shop.org/events/merchandisingworkshop).

“We are delighted to return to the Shop.org Merchandising Workshop as a Gold Sponsor and spend time with retailers who are looking to take their online business to the next level,” says Monetate founder and CEO, David Brussin, adding:

“Developments in the areas of social media and mobile computing make it more vital than ever that the retail website be an efficient hub for branding, merchandising, marketing and more, so I look forward to discussing the ways in which retailers can meet the demands of what Forrester Research is calling ‘the new era of agile commerce.”

At the roundtable, titled “Online Merchandising Best Practices,” Brussin will be joined by Bob Myers, CEO of Sheplers. Discussion will focus on proven website optimization strategies that retailers can implement, from curation and badging to targeted discounts and shipping offers. Retailers will be able to discover what works most consistently and what kind of results to expect from a range of emerging best practices.

Brussin is also one of four eCommerce experts selected by Shop.org for the very popular “Doctor Is In” portion of the event which enables retailers attending the Merchandising Workshop to book 20 minute sessions of one-on-one time with industry thought leaders in marketing and merchandising.

Monetate will be exhibiting at the event and offering free copies of several popular industry reports including “The Top 10 Testing, Targeting and Personalization Best Practices,” and a variety of marketing and merchandising case studies.

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions featuring Unified Performance Management, today announced the commercial launch of ExOS 6.1, the latest generation ExOS operating system for its complete family of Wide Area Network (WAN) Optimization appliances. The ExOS 6.1 release builds on Exinda’s leadership in offering Unified Performance Solutions that incorporate full visibility, control and optimization of each of the users and applications on the network, with a single WAN Optimization appliance.

The ExOS 6.1 release includes several key features and enhancements including the Exinda Edge Cache™, increased Optimization Scalability, and support for IPv6. These features address network issues including the increase in rich media such as video traffic on the WAN, the growing number and complexity of users and devices, and the rising demand for a better user experience.

“The use of video as a standard media type in non-media companies is expanding rapidly,” said Joe Skorupa, research vice president at Gartner Research. “Over the next three years, Gartner believes that video will become a commonplace content type and interaction model for most users, and by 2013, more than 25 percent of the content that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio.” (source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1454221)

“ExOS 6.1 enriches our UPM model, which has generated a tremendous response from the marketplace and fueled Exinda’s growth worldwide,” said Kevin Suitor, Exinda’s vice president of marketing. “Many of the enterprise customers that Exinda now deals with have made the switch to our UPM-based solutions because of our unique ability to combine a comprehensive visibility solution with a very granular dynamic policy control engine and comprehensive application acceleration into a single unit that is more cost-effective to install and expand on over time.”

“With the addition of features such as the Exinda Edge Cache, network managers are better equipped to manage network traffic as the evolution towards video-based application continues. In addition, ExOS 6.1 delivers full layer 7 application classification, visibility, and QoS for all native IPv6 traffic, which is an important differentiator for our customers,” said Suitor.

The Exinda Edge Cache enables single-sided caching of Internet-based content, including web objects, videos and software updates with a single Exinda WAN Optimization appliance at the branch office or data center, enabling a superior user experience and reducing WAN utilization costs. With the Exinda Edge Cache, web objects are cached at the network edge when they are downloaded from the Internet. These objects can then be delivered to the users on the corporate local area network much faster, providing a better user experience. By caching these web objects in the local office, organizations can drive down the network traffic consumed by each office, which directly reduces network costs.

With the ExOS 6.1 firmware release, Exinda has expanded Optimization Scalability, which significantly increases the number of accelerated connections on Exinda’s current hardware platforms, allowing more users to be supported on a single appliance. The result is improved performance for more users, without the need for hardware upgrades.

Technical Features of the Exinda ExOS 6.1 Release

Exinda Edge Cache

When web objects are downloaded from the Inter-net or across WAN links, the Exinda Edge Cache stores them at the network’s edge. When subsequent requests come for the same material, the content is quickly delivered from the Exinda Edge Cache, without the need to re-download the data over the WAN.The result is the ability to experience LAN speeds over the WAN, and provide users with a better network experience.

Support for IPv6

Exinda simultaneously provides all of the capabilities for IPv6 as it does for IPv4 traffic, enabling network managers to see, control, optimize and report on both types of traffic on the WAN while service providers and enterprise clients manage the transition between v4 and v6.

Optimization Scalability

Exinda has significantly increased the number of concurrent accelerated connections on each of its multi-core appliances by multithreading several core Optimization modules, which allows multiple instances of these modules to run in parallel, resulting in a greater number of accelerated connections being supported per appliance.

Enhanced reporting

With ExOS 6.1, Exinda has expanded its reporting from Top 10 graphs to include “All Other”, which provides perspective on what percentage the top 10 traffic types represents with respect to the entire traffic load.

Enhanced Network Health Alerting

Exinda has expanded its Application Performance Monitoring and Service Level Agreement (SLA) capabilities, allowing for finer-grained monitoring of application performance and alerts for specific TCP and network health issues.

New and Updated Signatures

Exinda’s UPM solution has the ability to identify and manage more than 2,000 application signatures. With ExOS 6.1, more than 70 application signatures have been added and/or updated.

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,000 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide to reduce network operating costs and ensure consistent application performance over the WAN. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions featuring Unified Performance Management, today announced the appointment of Adam Davison to Vice President, Sales, for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Exinda. Davison will be responsible for driving Exinda’s sales activities, building market presence via its network of distributors and resellers throughout.

“Exinda has significantly expanded its international capabilities to better serve our customers in key global markets,” said Michael Sharma, Chief Executive Officer. “We are confident that Adam’s extensive experience and proven understanding of the WAN Optimization landscape will help Exinda to achieve continued growth in EMEA. We are pleased to have Adam as part of the team that is bringing our Unified Performance Management approach to more organizations around the world.”

Davison brings to Exinda more than seventeen years of sales experience, including management and business development roles with networking companies, and has been successful in building markets, and maximizing sales in EMEA for international start-ups. Davison joins Exinda from Meraki, The Cloud Networking Company, where he successfully spearheaded their entry into the EMEA market. Prior to Meraki, Davison spent more than ten years with Expand Networks, most recently as Corporate VP Sales and Marketing. Previously, Davison held sales management positions at leading networking firms including Ericsson Enterprise and ACC.

“Exinda is recognized as the company to watch when it comes to advanced WAN Optimization technologies, and has been extremely successful in building relationships with key distributors including Exclusive Networks, Avnet and VADition, as well as with telecommunications and managed service partners including Vodafone,” said Adam Davison. “The company’s Unified Performance Management strategy gives organizations the visibility and control they need to implement intelligent WAN Optimization strategies that not only improve performance of business critical applications, and are aligned with the organisation’s business strategies. I am excited to be part of the team that is bringing advanced WAN Optimization technologies and a fresh approach to addressing networking challenges to EMEA.”

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,000 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide to reduce network operating costs and ensure consistent application performance over the WAN. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Blackboard, the maker of learning and education software for enterprises and schools, announced Friday that it is being acquired by a group of investors led by Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in media, entertainment, communications and information investments. Providence has also invested in several for-profit educational companies, like Education Management Corporation and Archipelago Learning. The acquisition is an all-cash deal valued at $1.64 billion, with Providence assuming approximately $130 million in Blackboard debt.

The educational software giant, which went public on NASDAQ back in 2004, will be dishing out $45.00 in cash for each share of common stock owned by its shareholders as a result of the acquisition. According to Blackboard’s press release, the company has been “evaluating strategic alternatives” to its current trajectory in an effort to provide its stockholders with better value (than presumably what they’ve been getting up to this point).

Since rumors over a potential acquisition began percolating back in March, and the company more broadly announced that it was seeking prospective buyers on April 18 of this year, Blackboard’s stock has largely hovered above $40.00 per share. (Compared to its being priced at $37.16 a share on April 18, and averaging over $35 the last few years, $45.00 a share at acquisition does indeed seem to be relatively positive return on investment for its sharedholders.)

According to Blackboard’s press release, the transaction must be approved by a majority of stockholders, and is subject to other closing conditions and regulatory approvals, but the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2011. Once the transaction is finalized, Blackboard will return to being a privately held company. Blackboard said that it will remain headquartered in Washington and will continue to be led by its senior management team; however, when a company is purchased by a private equity group, and goes back to being a private company, changes are presumably ahead.

Although the announcement made no specific mention of cost or personnel cuts, these tend to be an inherent part of this kind of acquisition, so Blackboard may be on its way to a bit of a shakeup — or at least some streamlining and trimming — in the coming year.

While Blackboard’s products are certainly widely-used, with over 5,000 education institutions using the company’s software, Blackboard has not always had the best reputation among students, especially in terms of user experience. In fact, my college opted for its own customizable educational software for this very reason.

Yet, both because Blackboard got a head start on the market and has become fully entrenched in universities and across secondary education systems and because its user experience has left room for improvement, many education startups have popped up with their own models aimed at snatching up some of Blackboard’s market share, like CourseKit, Instructure, Nixty, to name a few.

Blackboard acquired Presidium for $53 million back in January of this year, and Saf-T-Net for $33 million in March of 2010.

For more, check out Blackboard’s announcement here.